


Go Back to Your Heaven

by DeadHero



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor off brand entity of love Juno Steel, Poetry, Post-Episode: e018 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, and human but very angelic Peter Nureyev, well. it gets a lil poetic here and there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 15:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadHero/pseuds/DeadHero
Summary: "I know that there is nothing I can possibly say to undo what I did. What I did to you."Nureyev's face was stony."But to try to make it better," Juno swallowed roughly, "I'll answer any questions you have."





	Go Back to Your Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> based in a very elaborate but very uncomplicated au where Juno is a not only a private eye, but also a sort of angelic love god entity that finds people's soulmates on the side and ironically hates himself and loves too much for his own good. enter Peter Nureyev.

It was a dicey situation.

No, the fact that Juno was hiding behind a crate without a gun, just inches away from a gaping hole in the floor that led to 10 stories down, with the current criminal searching for him with full health and a personal arm cannon was NOT the reason why this was dicey.

.

Okay well, it contributed.

The main reason, however, was the tall, rather attractive -shut up, Juno- man crouching beside him with a blood in his hair and a cut on his cheek and staring at him.

Juno's back itched.

The detective decided that one more life-threateningly risky decision wouldn't kill him. So, with a set jaw and one more glance behind the crate at the gun-toting shadow slowly coming closer, he tore off his coat and tied it around his waist. Ignoring the wide-eyed expression on the man beside him, Juno sucked in a breath, grabbed the other, and rolled off the edge.

Wind filled his ears and stung his eyes. His back ached.

He could hear yelling but couldn't make out the words.

Juno knew he was a sentient flaming pile of garbage, but the man in his arms... Nureyev... he deserved to live. He dredged up memories of happiness long blurred or repressed by his own self-hatred. Memories of playing pretend with his brother, talking shit with Sasha and Mick at a dive bar, of nights filled with pain but content love and arms held around him.

His back was on fire and Juno _screamed_.

The floor came up to meet them but his wings, brand new and fresh, dingy and broken, caught the air and swept them into a wall. They crashed and fell onto the floor, bones aching instead of breaking.

Juno recovered first and hauled Nureyev onto his feet and ran. The two leaned on each other as they tripped over rusty mechanics and wires but they made it out to his car. Juno was on autopilot now and ignited the car, taking off without a second thought, trying to drive away from memories he never wanted to need.

His wings shifted behind him uncomfortably, trapped between his back and the seat.

A hand grabbed the wheel and pulled the car over, making an expert parking job despite it being from the passenger side. Juno let it happen.

The hand left the wheel and squeezed his shoulder hard. Juno focused on it, his breathing coming down from a hyperventilating he hadn't noticed until it started to slow. He breathed deeply until his lungs started to burn.

Nureyev looked at with an undecipherable expression. "Better?"

Juno nodded and exhaled.

"Yeah, I'm good now, thanks. Let's get going," he started to turn the wheel and Peter grabbed his wrist and yanked his hand off, almost holding Juno's hand to his chest.

"I think," Nureyev started very primly. "We should talk."

Juno eyed him eyeing Juno's wings.

"Sure," Juno replied. "But first I need a drink."

* * *

Juno took another swig from a bottle of scotch and pretended he couldn't see Nureyev now openly staring at his exposed back and new wings. He closed his eye and shifted in his seat, his hunched over position to not put pressure on his wings now hurting his shoulders. He heard footsteps walking from where Nureyev stood leaning against the kitchen counter over to the door. A pause. A long pause. 

Finally, he heard footsteps now coming over to him. The seat across the table squeaked against the linoleum as it was dragged out. Juno tensed as he heard an inhale.

"So, about that chat."

He pressed his lips together and opened his eye. "That chat...yeah."

Nureyev looked at him, with that damned expression that Juno couldn't make heads or tails of. He hated that he understood its anonymity. Juno sighed and flexed his wings, stretching them for the first time. He grimaced as he felt the tendons shift over hastily grown bones, feathers prickling and needling the fresh skin harshly as they shifted into place.

"So," Juno began, reluctantly. "My wings."

Nureyev stared at him blankly. Expectantly.

Juno tried to start with a different route, "That night after Miasma."

Nureyev's eyes narrowed. Jackpot.

He bit the inside of his cheek and straightened his back to look the other square in the face. "I know that there is nothing I can possibly say to undo what I did. What I did to you."

Nureyev's face was stony.

"But to try to make it better," Juno swallowed roughly, "I'll answer any questions you have."

That got a reaction. Nureyev leaned forward, his elbows splayed and fingers steepled as he studied the lady in front of him. A pin drop could've been heard.

"Alright then. Why did you leave in the middle of the night?"

Juno winced. Straight for the belt. He twisted the skin around his finger.

"I was scared." For an instant, Juno was grateful and hateful toward his ancestry for his tendency for the honest truth. "I feel as though I am physically tied to this city, like my soul is apart of it. And no," Juno looked up, "I don't mean that literally, I would know if someone had done that to me," he said to dispel any possible questions on that idea. He sighed.

"I was just... so fucking  _scared_ , Nureyev. When I said I was a fool for falling for you, I really meant it. Gods, angels, whatever, aren't built to love people, to be with people. We hurt people, whether we like it or not." Juno breathed in shakily and avoided Nureyev's eyes and stared at the ceiling. "Most of us get lucky and aren't affected by dumb shit like affection and companionship and love. But sometimes, some fucking times, one of us will care," he met the man's eyes with a tremble, "and someone will get fucking hurt.

Juno could hear static in his head and heartbeats in his chest. He stared at the wall, an inch to the side of the other's pensive face. He almost missed the next question.

"-wings, Juno. What about your wings?"

He looked at Nureyev, his eyebrows drawn tight. "What about them?"

The man sighed with just a touch of exasperation and what could be frustration. "Why, when I woke that morning, was there a trail of feathers from our bed to the bathroom and then to the door. Why" Nureyev gestured shortly, "is it that the last time I saw you, your wings were full, shining, almost eight feet in span and now they are..." Here, the man paused, his face finally starting to crack. "Why are they now dirty and bare and broken, too small for more than a second of life-saving gliding?"

A feather drifted to the floor.

Juno really did not want to answer this question. It would offer way more insight than he was comfortable with. He had promised to answer every question, though, so he steeled himself and spoke. "Wings are generally tied to the emotional or mental state of the owner, usually a mixture of both. Because I'm some kind of angelic minor deity of love," Juno almost spat the last word, "the state of my wings are tied to my sense of self-worth, my 'self-love'," He made air quotations with his fingers.

It took a second, a second faster than Juno thought it would have taken, for a light to dawn in Nureyev's eyes. The man's whole face seemed to open with understanding. Juno hated it.

Juno began to stand, unable to take the inevitable pity, when halted by a soft voice.

"You didn't answer my question."

He stopped halfway out of his chair and resettled. Juno peered at Nureyev for a second before leaning back in his chair, his wings shrieking in protest.

"Yes, I did."

The man shook his head. "No, Juno, you didn't."

If he didn't feel called out by Nureyev's words, the raised eyebrows and the slight tilt of his head sealed the deal.

He laughed slightly, with no small amount of derision, "Don't you get it, Nureyev? I hate myself a good goddamn much but the realization that I'd have to leave you, perfect fucking _you_ , in the dead of the night like some dumb one night stand, hurt me. Not nearly as much as it hurt you, that I'm sure of, but, surprise surprise, when someone has an epiphany that they can't have happiness for one time in their fucking life because they know, they _know_ , that they'll end up hurting or killing their happiness, it tends to fuck them up.

"So, Nureyev, when that happened, all my feathers fell out. I'm surprised you didn't mention how much you must've paid the hotel for the housekeeping with all of the blood that got everywhere. Did you find the remains of my wings on the sidewalk? I think they fell off somewhere between our room and the liquor store I stopped at," Juno finished ranting, breathing heavy. He kept breathing, his body shaking from where it had stood unconsciously as Juno had worked himself up into a half-mad yelling. He didn't hear a chair scrape or footsteps. Slowly, Juno gained control and sat back down, and glancing quickly at Nureyev's face.

To describe the thief's face would be like trying to explain a painting to a blind man. Vague thoughts and idea and emotions flitted across Nureyev's face but it was so quick and so undeterminable it was impossible to understand. His eyes, the corners of his mouth, his eyebrows twitched and his jaw jumped. Juno would've have given anything to know what was going through that man's mind.

What Juno didn't know is that he had already given anything. He had given an honest, straightforward (if a little heart rendering) answer when asked and hadn't tried to hide it more than the understandable once.

Finally, Nureyev's face settled on an emotion: determination. The chair scraped and the man took the singular step to stand next to Juno and hauled the lady out of his seat. He spun Juno around to face the wall and sat him back down in the chair. Nureyev knelt.

Juno could hear Nureyev's heartbeat and heard his own burst when he felt a soft, chaste kiss on the base of his right wing. He shuddered and felt more gentle kisses along his wing and cautious, loving fingers straightening the feathers and stroking them with a certain tenderness. Nureyev switched sides and Juno sobbed.

The man finished loving the proof of the angel before him and stood, spinning Juno back around to now face him. Then he threaded his fingers through Juno's wiry hair. Juno trembled. 

He gasped as his hair was pulled backward: gloriously painful, painfully sharp. Juno's solitary eye met Nureyev's and only had a moment to comprehend the frustration, despair, and love in the man's face before it was carved into his very soul by a blinding, searing kiss. The kiss didn't go any farther than that. There was no tongue, no charged fire that demanded fuel. It was slow and burned like the lava of a slowly waking volcano. It imprinted into Juno's bones and scorched every nerve in his body and radiated through his wings.

His back  _ached_.

Juno could've died in that moment, but Nureyev ended it by moving his head away an inch. There was no spit connecting them, but a new understanding that had taken place.  
Juno breathed and leaned his forehead against the taller man's chest. He wanted to make some quip or say something, but he just couldn't bear to shatter the moment. Minutes passed and the pair swayed, Juno holding Nureyev tightly with his face buried in a shirt more expensive than the building and Nureyev's hands carding through his hair and feathers respectively.

It was Nureyev who broke the silence. "Juno, I," his voice cracked. "Thank you, for your honesty. And curse you, for your selfish agape."

Juno looked up briefly and hummed. "Uh, um, no problem, it's the least I could do. Also, I don't think that word means what you think it means."

Nureyev gave a short, breathy laugh and held Juno tighter. "You care so much, you have such an endless compassion that encompasses those you love. But, you cut yourself off from a literal aspect of your identity to try to prevent harm. What you don't realize is that sometimes love does hurt. Sometimes we do hurt the people we love and that isn't just an angel thing, it's a very human thing as well. The thing though is that for love to work you have to work at it and give it your all and be willing to talk and communicate and be honest-"

"Are you trying to explain how love works to an actual entity of love," Juno cut in.

"So when you cut off the people who love you, Juno Steel," Nureyev steamrolled on, ignoring the interruption, "you end up only protecting yourself from a potential future while hurting the people in your present."

Juno fell silent at this. He felt lean arms holding him but his mind started to drift. Is that really what he'd been doing all these years? Instead of protecting people he had been protecting himself? He had been hurting people? For years? God, what the fuck had he been doing for so goddamn long what kind of entity fucks up their sole identity in life so badly-

Lips met his forehead and Juno focused on that. He shoved himself back into the moment and clung to the weight of his new wings, of the heat emanating from the body in front of him, of the kindness in the kiss on his forehead. Juno took a moment to revel in it, the sheer love and tenderness that nearly overwhelmed his higher understanding.

Juno sighed contentedly and buried his face even deeper into Nureyev's chest. He felt a gentle rumble behind the ribs. A kiss to the top of his head. Juno stayed in the embrace, letting himself be loved for this time, listening to his soulmate's heartbeat and letting it fill him to the brim with a sense of content Juno had never known. Now Juno is the one who breaks away first, pulling his head away and looking up at the man. Nureyev was looking at him as well, a soft and slightly curious smile painted across his face.

Juno slowly pulled the man toward the bed, unwilling to be apart more than a breath. He pressed down on Nureyev's shoulders until the man sat on the bed and then sunk down to his knees. He pulled off the man's shoes and then his own boots. Juno sat on the bed and pulled off the other's jacket as Nureyev undid and tossed away their belts. They laid down, legs and fingers intertwined, breath shared. Juno gave Nureyev a kiss on the lips and then on his cheeks, and his hair, and his forehead. The man gave him a small delighted grin before returning the favor.

His wings felt light and strong.

**Author's Note:**

> find me @fan-art-ic on tumblr yall pls scream with me about jupeter or really the whole podcast


End file.
